MTA Staten Island Bridge Toll Rebate Plan is Criticized

Former New York Lt. Gov. Richard Ravitch at a speech in Philadelphia in June 2013.

AP

UPDATED | Former Lt. Gov. Richard Ravitch sharply criticized the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s planned toll rebates for Staten Islanders who use the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, saying board members could be in violation of their fiduciary duty to the authority in approving it.

“You are in the midst of two labor negotiations in which you are undoubtedly asserting, and properly so, the financial constraints that make it impossible for you to meet the demands of the labor unions,” Mr. Ravitch, a former MTA chairman, said in a public comment session of the agency’s monthly board meeting. “That argument is inconsistent with voluntarily reducing the revenues of this authority.”

The measure was unanimously approved by the MTA board, but not before a debate among members about the appropriateness of passing a benefit targeted at Staten Island residents.

One board member, former New York City budget director Mark Page, abstained from the vote, explaining that he didn’t believe the toll rebates were “an MTA initiative,” and hadn’t been subjected to the authority’s usual decision-making processes.

“I don’t believe if the question were being asked solely of the MTA and this board that we’d be taking this action ourselves with our resources at this moment,” Mr. Page said.

That was an apparent reference to Gov. Andrew Cuomo and state legislators who announced the toll deal earlier this year. The rebate cuts 50 cents from the E-ZPass toll rate for Staten Island residents, beginning April 1. Under the proposal, residents would pay $5.50 for each round-trip toll across the bridge, compared with the current resident discount amount of $6.

Non residents using an E-ZPass pay $10.66 to cross the bridge. The cash toll rate is $15.

The toll plan also includes a 20% rebate for trucks and commercial vehicles making more than 10 trips a month over the bridge.

The reduction will cost the MTA $14 million in toll revenues. Plans call for the MTA and the state legislature to evenly share the cost, though the state hasn’t yet appropriated its share of the money.

Mr. Cuomo, at an unrelated news conference on Wednesday, said he disagreed with Mr. Ravitch, but declined to elaborate.

Board members, including MTA Chairman Thomas Prendergast, said they had carefully considered their fiduciary duties. Before the vote, a staff attorney gave reassurance that the rebate program was consistent with covenants of the authority’s outstanding debt.

Representatives of Staten Island defended the change.

“This is an important relief for people whose businesses have been onerously affected,” board member Allen Cappelli said. Mr. Cappelli noted the relative insufficiency of mass transit on Staten Island compared with other parts of the city and the MTA service region, saying that the island’s residents are “captive” to the Verrazano and must rely on their cars more than other residents.

But that position wasn’t embraced by the board, even as members prepared to vote in favor of the plan.

“Why do lower bus fares not have an equal claim on the MTA’s finances?” member Norman Brown asked, noting that the city also provides Staten Island Ferry service, free of charge.

“I live in a little place called Brooklyn,” he said. “We’re the ones that pay the toll that you’re always citing as a horrible toll.”

Another board member, Jeff Kay, said the MTA should remind state officials later in the year, as the authority lobbies for financial support for its operating and capital budgets in Albany, that the authority has acceded to demands from the legislature about how it levies tolls.